


pour myself like wine

by busaikko



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, M/M, One Night Stands, Post-Canon, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 15:51:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John doesn't figure out that he was a one-night stand until maybe a week later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pour myself like wine

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Shriekback, [The Only Thing that Shines](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqy7SnE-i1c) [YouTube link].

  
**and you know, this is nothing special  
with one slip  
we could lose ourselves forever  
one time for all time  
and you are  
the only thing that shines**   


  


* * *

One night, that first year, John and Rodney get drunk on some root-vegetable alcohol that Elizabeth traded for and go back to John's room and fuck for hours. They sleep maybe minutes total; the night is a long blurry montage of skin and tongues and fingers and dicks. John's always gone so far with guys but no further, has never let anyone fuck his ass before, but he doesn't tell Rodney that and Rodney doesn't ask, and John likes it better the second time, even though he's sore in places he's never been sore before.

A little after dawn, Rodney rolls his come-sticky self out of bed, gives John a wide delighted grin, and says, "Well, that was monumentally stupid." John lets his own grin be his answer, even laughing a bit, because they're both naked and he has bitemarks all down his thighs that kind of throb, now. "I'm glad we did this," Rodney goes on, gathering up his clothes and pulling them on, which makes him look even more like he's just been screwing all night. "I wondered, and now I know, which is pretty cool."

"Yeah, I guess," John says, wanting to sleep, his eyes gummy and his mouth tacky and tasting of Rodney. He gets up anyway, grabbing clean clothes to take into the shower.

"Great," Rodney says, really glowing with energy, smiling ear to ear. "So I'll see you," he says, and waves at the door, and John says _yeah_.

John doesn't figure out that he was a one-night stand until maybe a week later. As he watches Rodney lean over Katie Brown in the cafeteria, he thinks one or two angry thoughts. He wonders, in the small bitter part of his mind which he tries to keep tamped down, how long it'll take before she's spreading her legs.

When Rodney tells him he's dating her, John breathes like the air just got thin. Part of him wonders if he's just that bad in bed. No one's ever said so, but no one's stuck around, either. He thinks about asking Rodney, but he doesn't want to know that badly.

Years later, Rodney's on his second or maybe third or fourth serious girlfriend, and John's seen him slipping off every so often with guys, who knows how many. John stopped keeping count when Rodney showed him the ring meant for Katie. John even likes the new girlfriend, Keller, and he hates that he feels catty towards her. He has no right. He's seen that for Rodney, fucking guys is never serious.

Then Atlantis is in San Francisco, and John's finally been given twelve hours of leave. He plans on being a tourist. He has slick tri-folded pamphlets with pictures of the bridge and the cable cars. He's in jeans, and he's wearing the only black shirt he has that isn't faded to grey or purple. He's trying to brush his hair down when Rodney walks in.

Rodney grins when he sees the hairbrush: he thinks it's hilarious that John even owns it. John tries to preempt the mockery by bitching that Rodney didn't even knock, that John might have been naked or worse.

"Are you going to go get laid?" Rodney asks in this horribly jolly way. John freezes, and then puts the brush down, not caring what his hair looks like from the back. Rodney decided years ago that John's closeted: his grin is one John's seen before. John hates that look, so knowing and so utterly wrong. Rodney digs something out of his pocket, juggles it between his hands before flipping it over to John in a casual underhand. John plucks it out of the air. "That will take your sub-cu transmitter off the grid if you don't want them knowing you're in gay bars, or you don't want the Asgard beaming you bare-assed out of a kinky threesome."

"Huh," John says. "Thanks."

"Sometimes I miss being single," Rodney says, wistfully. John's vision washes red for a moment, and he wants to punch Rodney right in his goddamned big mouth. He clenches his jaw to keep from letting the words bleed out, that he's been in love with Rodney for a long time, far too long after his heart was broken. He wants to shove Rodney back on the bed and _make_ him love John back.

Instead, he jerks his head at the door and takes a couple of steps, casual. Rodney comes up on his toes, falling unthinkingly into a walk that matches John's stride perfectly. Rodney looks gleeful. John's grateful that they part ways at the transporter, so he can drop the false smirk that sat like lead on his face.

John's never paid for sex; he's never gone looking for it, either. He wouldn't even know where to start.

But what he wants right now is to be shoved down, pinned down, to be fucked for hours by anonymous dicks. He wants to be fucked until every thrust hurts so bad he'd do anything to stop it, and he wants to have no way to call it off, nothing to do but just take the pain until he's through it and it doesn't hurt anymore.

He doesn't find what he wants, even though he does a half-assed job of looking. He figures that only ever happens in porn, anyway. He comes back to Atlantis a little drunk and carrying a paper bag full of souvenirs, stupid things that had seemed like a good idea at the time.

On the way to his room he's struck, in a drunken way, by the terrifying realization that the useless souvenirs are a metaphor for his whole life, and he dumps the bag somewhere and instantly feels lighter, emptier, gutted. He kicks his boots off inside his door, strips for bed, and brushes his teeth without looking at himself in the shaving mirror duct-taped to the wall. He gets under the covers and curls onto his side, weariness a heavy weight; but he still stares into the dark a long time before finally falling asleep.

  
**Oh, you say that word and  
Pour myself like wine  
This is as much as I know  
This is all they told me  
All wicked shapes and lines**   



End file.
